The Northampton School for Girls Alma Mater

Katherine Burnett & Frances Cashman ’25

Anticipating how future generations of alumnae would feel about Northampton School for Girls, roommates Frances Cashman and Katherine Burnett wrote the ‘Hamp School Song in the very first year, 1924-25.  Frances composed the music, Kay the words.  The march-like tune and stride piano bass are typical of the popular music of the time.

It isn’t sung much any more.  We’d like to change that!  Here are the words and music to the song.

 

 

 Your comments and questions are encouraged!  Please use the space below.

First Thoughts: Mission Statements of Williston Academy and Northampton School for Girls

by Richard Teller ’70, Archivist and Librarian.  Originally published as a “web extra” to the Fall 2011 Bulletin.

Sarah Whitaker and Dorothy Bement, 1925

The idea of a formal statement of mission is relatively new, but schools have always had equivalents, whether found in the prefaces to catalogs or as essential portions of re-accreditation studies.  It would appear impractical, if not impossible, to found a school without some kind of declaration of one’s purpose in doing so.  At the time of their founding, both Northampton School for Girls and Williston Seminary, as it was originally called, issued documents that not only set out their plans, but reflected the personalities of their founders.

Northampton School for Girls, which opened in 1924, was imagined by Sarah B. Whitaker and Dorothy M. Bement to be rightly considered … the lineal descendant of their former employer, the Capen School for Girls.  They said as much in a 1923 prospectus, “Announcing the Northampton School for Girls”:

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